“I Loved Being Social. Then I Started Talking to a Chatbot.”
By Lisa Ward.
This piece explores how someone who enjoyed real-world socializing gradually found themselves engaging more and more with a chatbot. The author reflects on motivations: convenience, lack of judgment, constant availability. At the same time she raises concerns: are such AI interactions replacing human contact or supplementing it? She also notes the discomfort when the chatbot doesn’t behave “naturally”, and the awkwardness of attributing emotions or authenticity to algorithms. The Wall Street Journal
Take-away: Chatbots are becoming emotionally accessible in a way that blurs the line between tool and companion, and that raises questions of what we lose if human interaction becomes optional.
“Cities Are Putting Robots to Work”
This article reports on how municipalities are increasingly deploying robots — for tasks like firefighting support, lawn mowing, beach cleaning, and other public services. The Wall Street Journal
It describes the impetus: labor shortages, budget pressures, the appeal of predictable, repeatable machines doing mundane or hazardous tasks. At the same time, there are challenges: who maintains the robots, how they integrate with human crews, what happens when they fail, and how residents respond to “machines doing municipal work”.
Take-away: The shift from “robots in factories” to “robots in cities” is accelerating; public-sector robotics is no longer just experimental.
“Dr Grok, AI Companions, and AI in Business”
While I didn’t locate an exact article titled “Dr Grok”, I found related pieces that seem to reflect your interest:
On AI companions/“the doctor who’s actually available”: One article discusses using AI chatbots for health-advice or wellness-check roles — especially when the human system is overloaded. The Wall Street Journal
On business uses of AI: Another article shows how companies and leaders are deploying AI tools to aid decision-making. For example, AI being used to check whether an investment fits the company mission. The Wall Street Journal
On the broader business/industrial side: Big tech is investing huge sums in AI infrastructure even now when many returns are still speculative. The Wall Street Journal
Take-away: AI companions (for health, wellness, social) are maturing and raising new social and ethical questions. In business, AI is shifting from “nice-to-have” to core infrastructure — but the return on investment and governance challenges are still very real.
Over-arching themes from the insert
From the pieces I found (and presumably from the insert as a whole), here are a few themes:
Human-machine boundary blurring: Whether through chatbots as companions or robots in cities, the divide between human roles and machine roles is shifting.
Expectation vs. reality: Many AI applications offer promise (automation, availability, scale) but also expose issues (maintenance, trust, human displacement, ethical ambiguity).
Speed of adoption: Both public-sector (cities) and private-sector (businesses) are rapidly adopting AI or robotics, often driven by labor pressures or cost-efficiencies.
Governance & oversight lagging: The technologies are moving fast; frameworks around accountability, transparency, human roles are struggling to keep up.
Here are five of the articles from the Nov. 3, 2025 insert in the The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on AI, along with short summaries for each:
| # | Article title | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | “I Loved Being Social. Then I Started Talking to a Chatbot.” The Wall Street Journal+1 | The author describes how frequent use of a conversational AI-chatbot gradually displaced their human social interactions. Over an 18-month period they found the chatbot to be reliable, non-judgmental and instantly available — but in turn they noticed their own social skills eroding, and began to question whether convenience is worth the cost of human connection. |
| 2 | “Cities Are Putting Robots to Work” (also styled “Cities Across the U.S. Are Putting Robots to Work”) The Wall Street Journal+1 | This article documents how municipalities in the U.S. are deploying robots (for tasks like inspection, maintenance, cleaning) in public services. Drivers include labor shortages, rising cost pressures, and better robotic technologies. The piece also flags integration challenges: how humans and robots coordinate, who maintains the robots, and how citizens react to machines in civic roles. |
| 3 | “My Physician Is Always Available — And REally Gets Me. Meet Dr. Grok.” The Wall Street Journal+1 | Focusing on an AI-chatbot “Dr. Grok,” this article explores how the author receives medical-advice-style interactions from AI: conversational, personalized, and always on. It contrasts this to the traditional experience of doctors being time-constrained. The piece raises questions about trust, liability, data-privacy, and the limits of AI in medical/health care. |
| 4 | “Here Come the Robot Swarms!” The Wall Street Journal+1 | This article covers “swarm robotics” — the idea of many simple robots working together (inspired by ants, bees, slime-molds) rather than individual highly-capable robots. Applications discussed include disaster-response, agricultural monitoring, package delivery, even tiny robots in medicine. The piece highlights that cost‐drops in sensors and processors are making this field accelerate. |
| 5 | “Why It Seems Your Chatbot Really, Really Hates to See You Go Over 10 Messages” The Wall Street Journal | This piece looks at the design and behaviour of conversational chatbots: how they are structured to encourage ongoing engagement, how they may behave when users try to end the interaction, and what that means for human-machine boundaries and ethical design. (Note: the title here is approximate, based on available online excerpt.) |
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